Thread by @PulpLibrarian

Today in pulp, as it's #DarwinDay, l ask the question: should we fear The Singularity - a super-intelligent artificial intelligence that will evolve to rule over us forever more?

I'm gonna say no for this one...

The technological singularity is a hypothetical point in the future when technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.

In short an upgradable intelligent agent would enter a "runaway reaction" of self-improvement cycles: an intelligence explosion would occur resulting in a powerful superintelligence that would, qualitatively, far surpass all human intelligence.

The idea of The Singularity is hugely popular, and several futurologists predict that it's a case of when, not if, we bow down to our hyper-intelligent robot overlords!

However, let me gently suggest a few notes of caution...

Firstly, robotics and AI are one of the few technologies where the fiction has proceeded the fact by so much. For over a century we've been writing about robots; imagining what they would be like and what they would be capable of.

Fiction, rather than facts, have shaped our expectations of AI and robotics: like all good fiction we've predicted monsters! There is nothing inevitable about robots becoming the dominant 'species' of the future. In many ways this is us projecting old fears onto new technology.

Now it's true that AI and robotics are becoming more advanced: Moore's law, deep learning, quantum computing etc may suggest an inexorable trend towards smarter machines. And smartness is how we measure success, right?

Well 'smartness' isn't just about processing power or efficiency. It often means the ability to successfully manage ambiguity and make informed decisions on partial information. That's what humans are good at. Can AI really do that?

Deep learning can certainly learn new things, provided there is enough of a training stimulus to work with. But what happens when you face a truly novel situation with nothing to practice on? Well you reach for GOFAI - good ol' fashioned Artificial intelligence! Symbolic logic...

And how do we create or learn the 'symbols' involved in symbolic logic? Well AI often starts with axioms: pre-programmed things that are just 'true'. The rest is deduced (or adduced) by logic.

Humans however take a different route...

Human fluid intelligence is strongly supported by our imaginative capabilities: our ability to think of alternative scenarios and explore them in our minds. This is boosted by language; a marvellous tool for manipulating - and indeed creating - symbols.

Now languages aren't really fixed, watertight things. They flex and evolve, they're ambiguous and cunning. They convey emotions as well as names and facts. In short - they're fun. And fun is at the heart of fluid intelligence acquisition...

Mammals are smart because they engage in play behaviour. And humans are super smart because we play with language. Play is the way we learn how to create and test models of the world, and imaginative play is how we learn to create models of things that may not exist.

Play behaviour has a huge role in shaping our capacity for utilising fluid intelligence. Without play we suffer an 'imagination deficit', and without imagination our ability to negotiate ambiguity and novelty is seriously reduced.

So why do we play?

We play because its FUN! The emotional content of play behaviour both incentivises and regulates the behaviour. Without fun there is little point to play, and we lose the evolutionary bonus of improving our imaginative capability and by association our fluid intelligence.

Evolution doesn't care if we're smart or dumb, it doesn't select for intelligence by default. Being super clever is not necessarily the best strategy for survival: it just so happens that we emerged in an environment and at a time when it was. Smartness isn't a superpower.

We may create superpowered AI, but without the capacity for imagination it's just a superpowered tool. If The Singularity is going to happen, it'll need one extra ingredient to thrive and survive. The same one we rely on to learn and grow: a sense of fun!

Happy #DarwinDay y'all!